


Dreams of Fire

by peachdoxie



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachdoxie/pseuds/peachdoxie
Summary: Eddie Brock tries to figure out his relationship with Venom after they bonded at the Life Foundation. Takes place after the movie.Part 1 published. Parts 2 and 3 will come at some point.





	Dreams of Fire

Eddie dreamt of fire.

It surrounded him, engulfed him, snatched the breath from his mouth. He was falling, of course. He usually was, in nightmares.

He didn’t usually have a parachute, though.

The parachute slowed his fall enough that Eddie had a moment of relief, of hope that his hell might end soon. He felt safe with the parachute, like someone was looking out for him.

But his downward motion was inevitable, and the flames were hungry for his blood.

They reached up of their own volition and grabbed at Eddie. They wrapped themselves around his arms and chest, restricting his movement, and the feeling of safety faded from Eddie.

_Come back!_ he tried to yell. The words left his mouth as little more than a hoarse whisper, inaudible to anyone but Eddie alone.

Eddie’s parachute was torn from his back, but it grew hands – elongated, and not human – and reached out to him. Eddie twisted desperately in the grip of the flames. He turned just enough to reach out with one arm back at the parachute.

That feeling of safety, of some comforting presence, flickered like a candle in hurricane, trying to outshine the fire that burned its way into Eddie’s mind.

Just like that, Eddie woke, and the feeling was gone.

He grabbed at his phone, saw that it was early afternoon, and stumbled out of bed. Eddie didn’t bother turning the lights in his room on, instead choosing to navigate by the thin streaks of light filtering through the blinds.

Eddie shuffled into his bathroom. He pointedly ignored looking at himself in the mirror, ignored the shower curtain duck taped to its rod, ignored the lump in his throat that built when he saw that his urine had finally returned to its normal color after more than a week of a swirling black tint to it. _Dead symbiote cells,_ his mind whispered to him.

Done with the minimal of self-care in the bathroom, Eddie wandered to the kitchen and grabbed one of several Chinese take-out boxes from the fridge, avoiding the freezer. He nuked the take-out in the microwave, then sat down on his couch.

The unevenly heated noodles held no interest to Eddie’s appetite. He picked at them aimlessly and ate some before abandoning the container on the box that had replaced his broken coffee table.

There was too much quiet in the apartment. Too much quiet in his mind.

The week and a half since the explosion wasn’t enough time to heal the bruises and burns left on Eddie’s body. He ached, everywhere.

“ _Nothing seriously injured_ ,” Dan had said. “ _And the systemic atrophy is completely gone. It’s amazing. You sure you won’t tell me what happened?_ ”

Eddie fiddled with his necklace and stared into space, trying not to think, to remember, mind coated in that hazy fog of melancholic gloom that had plagued him since that night.

His eyes fell on a printout of instructions from a website that was stacked on the floor next to the coffee table box. _Progressive Muscle Relaxation,_ it read. It was less a sense of bored curiosity that made Eddie pick the printout up and more the need to do something other than sit there, despondently, until who-knows-when.

Eddie skimmed the instructions for the technique, set the papers down, and propped himself up against the pillows, stretched lengthwise along his couch. He folded his arms on his stomach and closed his eyes.

_Breathe,_ the instructions began. _Start with five deep breaths._

Eddie inhaled slowly through his nose and out through his mouth, like other meditation techniques had taught him to do. In and out, focusing on the way his chest rose and fell with each breath. It was harder than it should have been.

Onto the relaxation. Eddie squeezed his eyes further shut and scrunched his face, dry skin prickling with pain. A count of fifteen, and Eddie slowly released the contracted muscles. The heaviness and warmth that followed almost felt like….

Eddie tensed and released each of his upper body muscles in turn: neck, shoulders, chest, back. With each breath he took, he felt the warm ease down his body. The feeling was so similar that Eddie’s thoughts inevitably drifted to what he had lost. Less concrete thoughts, though, and more the memories of what it was like to be _with._

In the midst of his body’s growing calm, his mind hovered in that liminal space between wakefulness and a dream, and Eddie let himself remember.

_…a denseness, like a coat made of lead, but within him…_

_…perception, but with senses he could not use on his own…_

_…overwhelmed in his own body…_

_…that voice…that presence…_

_…that other…_

_…not alone…_

_…_

_… **Eddie.**_

His eyes flew open.

Something felt different. Something _felt_ different.

There was _more_ to him than there had been moments ago.

Eddie sat up, breathing fast. He looked down at his hands.

Covering them were strands of black, woven around his skin like tattooed roots, which he knew grew from deep within the muscles and bones. Eddie’s awareness of them pulsed in time with his heartbeat, now pounding rapidly within his body. If he focused...if he focused, he could feel the way his blood moved through his veins and capillaries where they intersected with the tendrils.

The feeling was spread across his entire body so that Eddie could sense every bruise and cut, every creak of his joints and ache in his muscles, all at once.

Slowly, slowly, the pain faded.

And so did Eddie’s awareness of that other presence in his body.

Desperately, Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and focused, reached down within himself and tried not to let it…let _him_ get away this time, not like when he left Eddie in order to save him.

He imagined himself pulling at the symbiote’s mind and bringing it into his own. That feeling of not being alone that Eddie so dearly craved again – Eddie held onto it and refused to let go.

**Eddie.**

That voice, that presence, it was _there_ ,and Eddie answered it.

“Venom,” he whispered.

**Eddie,** the symbiote said back. His voice vibrated against the back of Eddie’s neck, not so much a physical sensation as a mental one, but with no better way to describe it. **You’re safe.**

“Yeah, I am,” Eddie said. Eyes still closed, he relished in the relief that Venom was alive. “And so are you.”

There was the familiar sensation of Venom rooting around in his mind, reading the memories that floated on the surface.

**It seems that enough of me survived in you while the rest of me died.**

“But why couldn’t I feel you?”

**My consciousness was spread too thin.** Venom paused, and Eddie knew what he was going to say before he said it. **But you brought me back together.**

**Thank you.**

Eddie opened his eyes and examined his hands once more. The tendrils had disappeared from his skin, but he knew that they were there, just below the surface. “Hey, it’s no problem. That’s what friends do, right?”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth twitched, though he wasn’t sure if it was from his or Venom’s mirth at the statement. Perhaps both.

From the coffee table box, Eddie’s phone vibrated, startling him back into himself. He picked it up and read the calendar reminder about his meeting with Anne. That’s right. They were finally going to catch up now that things with the police had settled down some.

Eddie stood up. “We can talk more later, Venom.” He stretched his arms up above his head, feeling refreshed and awake for the first time since the explosion. Inside his body, the symbiote had settled himself into a comfortable position. It felt _right_ to Eddie, to have Venom back with him.


End file.
